Lucidity
by ifollowapollo
Summary: I like the idea that it wasn't so easy for Lecter & Starling to become Hannibal & Clarice in the first few weeks. He had intended to kill her, after all...
1. 1

Some words herein are borrowed from the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, W.H. Auden, and the sexy and remarkable e e cummings.  Thomas Harris will forever be remembered as the creator of the magnificent Hannibal Lecter, M.D. But thou, meek lover of the good! 

_Find me, and turn thy back on heaven._

_Oh, dear God!_  I felt the room shift.  An explosion of sensations greeted the touch of his lips against my bare skin, and the shock seemed to bring me to the surface of the warm, gentle liquid of my new existence, and I breathed.  My long, shuddering breath was loud in the silence, and I desperately tried to keep my body from tensing, but I could not.  I waited, but he merely continued suckling, and I had just begun to believe it had escaped his notice when he suddenly lifted to me a frighteningly unreadable expression.  
  


I could not look into his eyes, or he would surely see my hesitation, and then all would be lost, no matter that I had partaken of the flesh—a singular communion—with this…man.  With a composure borrowed from the powerful narcotics stampeding my discretion, I dropped my gaze to his lips, dark and swollen from activity.  It seemed to me they moved with mesmerizing perfection.

"Clarice."  His voice seemed to echo tightly around me, as if from a distance in a tunnel.  I moved away from it, receding into the darkness, instinctively seeking safety even in my watery state of mind.  Another voice chased me back out with the horror of truth nipping at my heels like a vicious black dog in a big pink bow:

--And the crack in the teacup opens 

_A lane to the land of the dead._

Time.  I needed time.

Slowly, I leaned back in my chair.  My gaze on the fire, I grasped Lecter's head between my hands and guided him back to my breast.  The dancing flames seemed to burn their way into me, lapping at my farthest nerve endings with an unbearable heat.  I somehow believe, even now, that looking away might have stayed my immolation.  But I could not.

*  *  *

Self-awareness had not been lost, though I had been.  I mean that I was very much aware of liking things, disliking things, of wanting a cup of coffee, black, or to go for a run, or to feel him powerfully riding my body to rapturous fulfillment, but I had no conception of whom I was.  Dr. Lecter had kept me in this way for two weeks, throughout which I had lost all sense of time and could not have guessed at the duration to save my life.  

Then, I experienced something of a visitation.  It was as if I was privy to the thoughts in another woman's head.  Odd that this occurred whilst I was enshrouded in the densest fog of surrealism:  we'd checked in at the gate, and the airline attendant had addressed me as Mrs. Cowled.  And something had happened.  

Every step down the long walkway seemed to jar another memory loose, and my steps grew hesitant.  This woman's voice demanded my attention, forcing me to focus on the knowledge that I was leaving the country.  A warning chill shivered down my spine, and the man with his hand at the small of my back didn't miss a beat as he guided me to my seat.  

A pinprick, and it was over.

*  *  *

I recall nothing of the remainder of our flight, nor how we arrived at the house by the sea—truly, other than this particular detail, and that the sun set behind the sea, I knew not where I was.  

My first lucid moment in that house was under the fiercely fucking body of Hannibal Lecter.  

*  *  *

_Under pain, pleasure,--_

_        Under pleasure, pain lies._

_Love works at the centre,_

_        Heart-heaving alway;_

_Forth speed the strong pulses_

_        To the borders of day._

The light came and went, and I counted:  one day.  The night brought another fierce round of nocturnal activity.  The sex was so rigorous it felt like a punishment.  The days I spent alone, as usual, but when dark befell my sphere, he always returned.  I did not understand until the third night what was happening.

I awoke from a brief respite due to a sense of falling—I have a memory of learning this happens when one falls asleep after excessive exhaustion…there is another memory…it eludes me—and I saw him beside me, propped up on one arm and watching me with an unnatural intensity.  He lifted my shoulder until I, too, was on my side, his hand slipping to trace the exaggerated curve of my waist.  A spasm, a harsh grip on my flesh, and it became clear there was to be no rest after all. 

"_I like my body when it is with your body.  It is so quite new a thing_," he whispers the intoxicating words of another genius.  

"_I like your body.  I like what it does, I like its how's_."  His hand roams the planes of my back, his slowly enunciated words smooth accompaniment: "_I like to feel the spine of your body and its bones, and the trembling, firm, smoothness_," he leans down and presses his lips to my shoulder, his hand cupping my arched hip, "_which I will again_," he presses me onto my back and his lips graze my breast, "_and again_," his tongue dips into my navel, "_and again…kiss.  I like kissing this and that of you.  I like slowly stroking the shocking fuzz of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes over parting flesh…and eyes big love-crumbs._"  

And indeed I felt my eyes widen as he skillfully triggered an orgasm with a simple touch deep within.  His ability to command my body so effortlessly is still beyond my comprehension.

"_And possibly I like the thrill—of…under…me…you…so…quite…new…_"  His voice broke at this, and he covered me, pressing his lips against mine, but not moving.  He was still for so long I felt suffocated by his dead weight.  And that was when I finally understood:

He was savoring me, stockpiling sensations for the future—a future without me.  

And I woke up.

*  *  *


	2. 2

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_Author's note:  The story becomes third-person at this point for no other reason than that I wrote this part first, before deciding to expand the story to encompass the first eighteen days in the relationship.  Then I was too lazy to go through this and change it to match.  _

_He builded better than he knew;--_

_The conscious stone to beauty grew._

Clarice sauntered past him, not touching him, just close enough to disturb the air around him.

She was very much aware of the sensuous image she presented, with the flowing length of champagne satin billowing behind her calves as she swept across the broad expanse of marble to stand at the open French doors.  One shoulder casually propped against the doorframe, she watched the sea froth, fighting the gravity of its keeper, even as she fought hers.  She felt him watching her, her form clearly backlit in the pool of sunlight pouring through the spot she chose with deliberation.

But he did not come.

But she knew he wanted to.

And that was almost winning.  Turning her head ever so slightly, she sent a look in his direction.  Yes.  He was very much aware that she was aware.  She waited, breath bated, curved iron wills glancing in silent engagement.  

And then he was gone.  

Victory was a quiet, hollow necessity for Clarice Starling.  She turned her far seeing gaze back out to sea, and the zephyr hand dried her sheen of remorse.  Confused at her own unwillingness to explore her impetus to prolong this deadly…Armageddon…of theirs, she found herself gravitating towards the elegant wingback he favored in the mornings.  

Ensconced in its prim-plush hold, she closed her eyes and inhaled his scent, and though her conscious self still foundered, a primal awareness existed as to why she stayed with a man who had decreed that she should not live.

*  *  *

It was dark when the front door swung silently on its hinges, and the master of the house entered just as silently.  He was immediately aware of the heart beating within his home, of the woman breathing the short, even breaths of sleep.  The stairs were no obstacle to his fleet passage as he approached the room through the shadows.  

A pause at the door.  A moment, breathless, a throbbing at the temple, and he seemed to burst through an invisible barrier into the moon kissed room.  

Touching was a miraculous experience.  His very cell particles sought something from hers.  For eighteen nights, theirs' was the purest sexual relation humans could achieve, but with one look from her today, it had become something very different.  No longer did his awareness remain a spectral third in a baleful undertaking.  There was strange fulfillment in contact.  It was communication on a kinetic level of what he could not say, what she could not face.

*  *  *

The sea before him shimmered beneath the bright Pleiades, and Lecter allowed the water to gently lap at his feet.  It was not the cold that made him shiver.  He had spent the whole day quietly watching her some distance from the house, ready.  But she had not attempted to leave.

Things were not going as he'd planned.  Always ready and able to adapt to the unexpected, he'd even considered this possibility—however remote—but he hadn't accounted for his own reaction to her.  He'd let the drugs fade from her system.  Tonight was to be the night.  When she'd figured it out, he'd intended for her to do so.  What he had not accounted for was the equipollence of her game.  His muscles clenched in remembrance of their impassioned congress only minutes before.

He'd had her in every way over the weeks, but had somehow kept it impersonal, one could say, recreational.  He'd been so careful, keeping conversation to a minimum.  Yet for all his effort, she hadn't had to utter a word in the end.  She'd merely grasped him as he'd made to leave tonight, pulling him into her warm embrace, kissing his breast softly once before resting her cheek gently against his heart.

He'd fled the moment she fell asleep, possibly waking her—he did not know, he'd gone so quickly.

*  *  *


	3. 3

*  *  *

Clarice watched the shadowy figure disappear down the steps to the beach below the house.  Still reeling from their explosive union, she fell back against the window seat to wait.  

When he'd come to her tonight, she hadn't known what to expect, but she had been prepared for one of two possible outcomes.  When he'd fallen upon her with the speed of a pouncing tiger, she'd felt her first moment of true fear.  Through every perilous raid she'd led over the years, never once had terror struck her as it had in that single moment tonight.  

With strength borne on a tsunami of adrenaline, she'd wrested herself from beneath his weight and pinned him beneath her, intending to reach for the kitchen knife secreted under the mattress, but he hadn't struggled, and his quietude had unsettled her resolve.  He'd felt good under her legs.  His eyes had gleamed in the dark, and she'd fallen into him, straddled him, undulating in a powerful rhythm, the earthy scent of wantonness matching the tide of passion burgeoning within her, and any resentment of him and what he'd done to her had melted into the pool of heat overtaking her everything.

Cold now, Clarice shifted her seat and peered out the window, seeking a trace of him_._  She smiled a little.  Hannibal Lecter.  _I must be out of my mind._  

She'd spent every waking moment of the last twenty-four hours deliberating over her predicament, only to realize that this was the most interesting she had ever been in her whole damned life!  He was right all those years ago, when he'd so nonchalantly proclaimed her to be "so ambitious."  She was.  Clarice Starling wanted to be someone special.  She wanted a place in the world that was uniquely her own, a distinguished existence.  She hadn't found it wearing the white hat—she was ready to try the black.

She'd spent the whole day wandering around the house.  Forays into the library and his bedroom revealed that the house was, surprisingly, his.  Books on every subject, from art to science, from history to religion, were strewn across every flat surface, and most were annotated in his very distinguishable handwriting.  There were books so old she feared for their preservation in her curious hands.  In his bedroom, closets and drawers bearing clothing of the finest hand all shared his rich scent.

She'd watched the views from every window, and wondered at which were his favorites.  She'd wondered which views he'd enjoyed over the years while she'd been cooped up in the back of a smelly van, or shivering in the cold, dark of an old warehouse, or staring at the sick, gray walls of Quantico—or down the barrel of a gun.  While she'd wasted away, diligently pursuing the dream of a livelihood with meaning, a job where she could make a difference, he'd been here, in sunshine and glory.  

Leaning her head back against the wall, Clarice fervently wished that she could turn back time, and regain those lost years.  She'd missed out.  There was little solace in the thought that she had never really known what she was missing all those years, she knew now, and sadness overwhelmed her.  Maybe she should have listened to Ardelia.  She'd had more than a few opportunities to establish a relationship, though she had a suspicion that no other man would have made her feel this way.  

She would have him then.  He already wanted her, now she had to make him need her—alive.

*  *  *

Lecter trod through the back door at the precise moment that Starling entered the kitchen wielding a large butcher knife.  They each stopped in their respective doorways.  Clarice moved first, in just such a way as to promote ambiguity in her intent.  Pride and regret waged a strange battle in her at the look of uncertainty that flitted briefly across Lecter's face before his features were, once again, schooled into five card stud perfection.  

There was a gentle clink as she set the knife in the sink, and turned to face him.

There she stood, vulnerable—and beautiful—to him.  Caution tempered his urge to touch her, but it did not keep him from approaching her, keeping a keen eye on her reaction.  It required the greatest of effort on his part not to flinch when she reached out to him, only to cup a hand around his head, pulling him in for the first kiss she ever initiated between them.  Their locked gazes remained unbroken as her lips grazed his softly, pulled away slightly, a breath between them, then another meeting of lips, deeper, and frighteningly satisfying.  It was she who broke away, and said:

"I consider it an unspeakable discourtesy for you to share my bed only during sex.  It leaves me unsatisfied.  I expect you to correct your distasteful habit.  Hannibal."

A stare.  A blink.  

A small smile, and a nod:  "As you wish, Clarice.  Shall we?"  He bowed slightly, gesturing to the door with one elegant wave of his hand.

"I think not.  It's almost day, and I would like some coffee," she said, fighting to keep the tremors from her voice.

He watched her a moment, eyes slightly narrowed, and she fought the urge to run.  Just when she feared she'd uttered her death sentence, he turned and set about brewing a pot, saying:  "Why don't we breakfast altogether?  I'll bring a tray to the morning room, if that is suitable to you?"

"It's still dark.  I'd prefer the library, if you don't mind."  Clarice was glad he kept his back to her during the long silence that followed.  At last he turned, and answered equably:

"I don't mind at all, Clarice."  His drawn enunciation of her name was reminiscent of their earliest days together, all those years ago, and his look was one of understanding.  Clarice shored up her courage, determined to see this through.  Her life depended on it.  Both their lives did.


	4. 4

*  *  *

_Non est ad astra mollis e terris via-- There is no easy way from the earth to the stars_

Hannibal entered the library to find a fire crackling in the hearth, and Clarice sitting on the floor before it with a book.  Several of his books had been drawn from the shelves and stacked on the small table between the chairs.  A furtive glance revealed her selection to be books of poetry interspersed with some medical texts, some inscribed "Peretta Peronne," and one entirely handwritten, more like a manuscript than a book, entitled _Passionibus Mulierum Curandorum_, filled with meticulous drawings of female genitalia.  This last volume she now perused.

"Is this Latin?" she asked.

"It is," he replied, as he balanced the tray against the table while moving some books aside.

"I wish I knew Latin.  Is this Italian?" she asked, holding up another book.  The Giamboni translation of the Brunetto Latini work contained some rather indecent doodles in the margins, and Lecter considered removing it from her grasp.

"Your breakfast grows cold."

"I wish I knew Italian."

"It was written in the thirteenth century.  The language has changed somewhat since then," he said with a small smile.

"But you can read it?" she urged.

A pause.  "Yes, Clarice, I can read it."

A silence.  "Will you teach me?"

More silence.  "What is it, precisely, you wish to learn, Clarice?"

She found an honest answer:  "The things you know."

He regarded her a moment, the firelight touching her hair in golden shimmers, the shadows deepening the hollows that cradled the curves of her.  

She was real.  Here.  Not a dream, not a fantasy, and not a watered-down version of Clarice Starling.  Here, before him, was the woman who had been in his thoughts for a decade, and she proposed to be with him long enough to learn Latin—and an archaic Italian vernacular.

He looked carefully for the lie hidden in her demeanor, but could discern none.  He sensed hesitancy, but not dishonesty.  Here she offered something for which he had never allowed himself to hope—_but why?_  

It was disbelief that tainted his faith in his own perceptions, and Clarice saw it.  Instinctively, she knew this was the balance she must strike between them, not just for a time, but for always.  

He must trust her, but never completely.  There must always be that morsel of doubt, for if he knew her heart was wholly his, tedium would set in—and he would require entertainment anew.  But there must never be tangible evidence that he should mistrust her.  Nothing should ever be done to make him feel threatened.  

"Clarice—"

"—I think this guy is confused.  He labeled her neck 'cervix'!"  Make him smile, make him laugh.  Make him need to laugh.

He approached to peruse the indicated drawing, and then settled back into a chair with a smile, saying:  "Indeed.  However, the author was a woman.  Do you recall ever learning of Trotula of Salerno?  She was quite a famous physician in her time, considerably accomplished."

"Tell me," Clarice implored, moving to sit by his chair.  As he extolled the virtues of the long dead woman, Clarice made note of the qualities he admired—her excellence, intelligence, and the controversy surrounding her work—even while she strove to make him aware of her presence, draped against his leg, as if in supplication, clasped hands resting on his knee, chin on hands, eyes raised to his.

He ended his brief, yet concise lecture, and they were silent, food forgotten.

"So," Clarice murmured suggestively, "when is a cervix like a cervix?"  Her hands moved sensuously up and down the length of his thighs, deeply massaging the flesh beneath her fingers and palms.

His lips parted, and Clarice felt a hunger to feel him in a way she had never felt a man.  Except for their first moment beside another fire, their explorations up until this night had never included activity born of her initiative.  Hours ago, she had sat astride him and felt a wonderful power, a newfound sensation to heighten her pleasure.  Now, she wanted to watch him break.

"Well?" she entreated. "Do make an attempt at an answer."

He simply stared at her, and Clarice moved her hands higher, and slowly released the closure of his pants.  She pulled the zipper down, an exotic and sensuous sound, and pulled the two ends of fabric apart, reaching in to release his growing erection from the silk confines.  Taking him in one hand, she stroked his length languorously, fingers lightly brushing along the top of his steadily throbbing flesh, thumb stroking the underside of the tip with gentle pressure, softly demanding:

"When was the first time you imagined me doing this to you?"


	5. 5

*  *  *

"I never imagined this scenario," he demurred.  He had never allowed a woman to touch him as Starling did now.

"Then what scenarios did you imagine?" she pursued.

"I believe we may have enacted them all." 

"All?  Are you certain?" she challenged, wrapping ten digits tightly around him before letting go all at once.  On her knees, in the space she'd created for herself between his, she stretched forth, sinuous temptation.  A glimpse of pink, and white light flashed through an immense palace, dissolving walls and doors and locks in the moist heat that sucked every vertical barrier into rubble in the wake of pleasure.  There was nothing, he was nothing as she took him into the sweet warmth of her mouth, brief as lightning.

"Tell me," she demanded.  

A swirl of colors hazed his vision.  It seemed that sweet venom glistened on the lip she dragged across him in slow torment. 

"When I was free," he breathed, and was rewarded with a soft press of lips, but nothing more.  He continued:  "A bandage on my face…the scent of adhesive…an image of you before me…wet…and shivering."  She was fellating him in earnest now, and speech was difficult, but he knew a fair exchange was what she had in mind.  He'd built better than he knew.  He continued, hoarsely:

"I wanted you then.  You were so real.  So human.  Young, strong, delicate, sensitive.  Complex.  Like a fine wine, a rare balance of complexity and clarity—meant only for a rarefied palate."  A hint of heat in a guttural growl:  "_Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi._"  At this point, he was cradled deep within Clarice's throat, and Jack Crawford was permitted no further thought.  "I wanted to come for you, to taste you, all of you," he rasped as she took him completely, her tongue laving the base of his hypersensitive organ.  He reached out.  "And touch you.  I had settled for writing to you, but in the end, I had to see you," he expulsed this last with the barest caress of curved knuckle at her temple.

Clarice watched his face contort in anguish as a heated river blasted a path behind her breastbone.

Minutes passed with only the sound of the old clock ticking on the mantle.  He gradually became aware of the sound of the flames engulfing wood in the hearth, of the daylight spreading green and gold across his vision.

"Why did you wait so long, then?  Why now?"  Clarice was once again sitting on the floor at his knee, still gently holding him in one hand.

He gazed upon the venerated features of the sole woman whose privilege it was to command his deference.  Irreverence aside, in all things Clarice Starling.

An angel?  God hath no mercy in the world according to the damned, but humor there was in abundance.  Impermanence was a certainty.  Could he lose her if they went any further?  He felt the familiar hollowness of loss, even now.  No longer was his original intent backed by the strength of his convictions.  Torment!—to be starved and led to the banquet, removed of one's teeth!  

As he watched her, the sun inched over the horizon and the world brightened a discernable degree.

A decision.

Granting prudence no sway in the matter, he gave her all that he could.  It was as if he bled the truth.  A man who knew no shame, he laid bare to her all his longing in candid revelations evoking stark, electric imagery, feeding her hunger for a glimpse into his private world.  

"You 'visited' me?"  Her eyes were wide with shock.

"Only to see you, sometimes for mere moments.  Always at a distance.  I never intruded upon your privacy, Clarice, only saw you as anyone who shared your daily route could see you.  A glimpse of you lasted for years at a time."

All pleasure, pain, sorrow, and hope poured from his lips into the recent cavity of her heart, filled the emptiness left behind by a world that was never hers.  That which had previously occupied the space had been cold and oddly shaped, where only the warm, apposite pliancy of requited love could now fully stem the ache.  His every word salve to wounds of loneliness, he continued:

"I thought of you every day.  Sometimes, I would be overcome by flights of my imagination.  Once, I imagined a breath I inhaled, a scent borne sweet on the wind—here on the other side of the globe—was once your very breath, and I was not able to exhale.  I had resolved to hold you in me forever," he declared, softly.  "However, the body does not always adhere to that which the head rules," he mused.  A pause.  "I fainted."

Clarice stared, incredulous.  "You fainted?  _Fainted_?" she nearly yelled.

"Do calm yourself, Clarice.  Yes, _fainted_."

"You fainted," she murmured, more to the floor than to him.  He'd held his breath until he'd fainted, she thought.  A low laugh rumbled, but never surfaced as she was overcome with unexpected joy.  She could be with this man.  Forever.  

She faced him, unabashedly displaying her emotions as she rose to straddle him in the chair.  She placed her hands on either side of his face, intending to bring him close for a kiss, but stopped when she felt the unmistakable cold of steel against her nape.  

He ran the blade along her skin, before playfully waving it before her and setting it on the table beside them.  Clarice—frozen astride him—watched as he removed the cover from a dish on the tray to display the knife she had earlier taken from beneath her mattress and returned to the kitchen.


	6. 6

_*  *  *_

"_Arma tuentur pacem._  Lesson one:  Arms maintain peace." 

"I thought lesson one was fellatio?"  Her affected nonchalance failed to disarm him.

"You need no instruction in that regard."  His smile was precious to her, in that moment so intimate and honest.  The ties that bind began their woven pattern; a single strand glistened down one velvet cheek.

"Tears?  From the great and mighty warrior Starling?"

"No.  Just a woman," she said.  "One who's just learned she needs something she has no control over."

She tried to rise from the chair, but he held her to him.

"May I presume that _I_ am that which you speak of needing?"

She kept her gaze on the pulse at his throat, her hands molding the shape of his shoulders, moving down, inch by inch, over the curves and plateaus of his torso, dragging the soft fabric of his shirt beneath the pressure of her caress.

"Is that what you desire, Clarice?  To control me?"  He grasped her shoulders and pulled her close.  He bared his teeth in a snarl a bare inch from her mouth, and Clarice shuddered.  "Is that what this is about?"

She suppressed the overwhelming desire to scream that she loved him, but she mustn't—not ever.  Instead, she reached down and grasped his sated sex, saying:  

"_This_ is what we're about."  Then, placing one hand at each temple, she held him and stared deeply into his eyes.  "You are a madman in the eyes of the world.  But I must be mad, also, because I want you!"  She pressed his skull between her hands.  "I want to know what's in there.  You fascinate me—don't be angry.  I don't want to _study_ you.  I want to _know_ you.  I want to be the one person who knows your thoughts, who shares your world.  And yes, I want to own you.  It's only fair, considering your influence over me."

"And what of the lambs, Clarice?  Will they not scream in your absence?"  He was studying her carefully, and Clarice knew the importance of her answer, and was blessed with an epiphanic moment of clarity.

"There are few sounds in your world, aren't there?"  

He stared at her for a moment before confirming with a simple:  "Yes."

"What will I know there?"

"Silence."  It was as much a revelation to him as it was to her, and he seemed to move some great distance in his mind.  "The colors are brighter than any earthly hue.  The sights are beyond expression.  The scents evoke a well-being that cannot be measured in mortal habit."

"Mmm.  Sensual override?  My 'mortal habit' could stand some of that."  Her words brought him out of his faint reverie.

"We haven't finished with your first lesson."  

Clarice reached over and took hold of the butcher knife, hurling it into the fire with deadly accuracy.  "Lesson one over."

Lecter's response was an arched brow, and a soft:  "I think I'll keep mine."

Clarice paused.  "On to lesson two, then."

"Was it my mistake, or did you want to be fucked?"

"I can do two things at once."

"I'm flattered," he smirked.

"Ah.  Perhaps you'll prove me wrong?"

"Let's compromise.  _Ars amandi.  _Lesson two:  The art of loving."

He pulled one leg from between him and the chair arm, draping the silken expanse over the side.  When he did the same for her other leg, he pressed her back until she lay exposed to him, her head falling back over his knees.  Clarice heard the satin of her gown give way to the unmitigated force of applied steel, and her nipples hardened at the mingled cold and anticipation in the air. 

Clarice's nakedness in the light of day was something quite new to Hannibal.  She lay before him, trusting, responsive, and all things to him—palpable.  When he proceeded to stroke her flesh, it was something of an obligatory gesture, for he'd gleaned full satisfaction in the very sight of her; pressed the image, the moment, like a flower in the pages of his mind, to keep for eternity the moment of joy the sight of her had produced.

She grasped his ankles, and his hands traced and reshaped the curves of her breasts, thumbs circling the delicate peaks, while she sighed in pleasure.  His hands moved lower, as he began a philological discourse in response to her challenge, and Clarice tried to concentrate on his words, to give him the answers that would be rewarded with maddeningly brief flicks of his fingers against her swollen clitoris.

"_Ars artium_," she hissed an answer, and felt the sweet relief of pressure, but only for a moment.  She bucked against his hand, and felt that she would explode from the blood pounding in her head, fighting to flow to the other end of her body and take up residence at her pleasure center.

"And what is logical, Clarice," he asked, setting each of her ankles at the top of the chair, "in equating an orgasm of pleasure to 'death'?  Shall we call this lesson then _ars moriendi_—the art of dying?"  He hoisted her forward and up.  Clarice, no longer hanging over his knees, had a clear view of him as he placed his lips around her.  She came in a dizzying rush, confusion rampant in a body where blood had been caged and forbidden, and was now rushed to every tingling nerve ending.

Eventually, the world settled, and Clarice Starling learned she was still in it, though confused when he picked up the topic once more. 

"_Mortuum_ is 'of death', as in _caput mortuum_, or death's head."  He lowered her back down, but grasped a handful of her hair to keep her head from falling back, so that she could watch him guide her hand to his erection.  "Change the spelling, and you have the German _kaputt, _meaning broken.  How do you suppose 'head' became 'broken'?  Then there's _caput mundi_, or 'head of the world', many times a reference to Rome, and by association, to God."  

By the hair, he pulled her face closer.  He stilled her soft hand on his cock, forcing her fingers tightly around him, demanding:  "Which is it, Clarice?  _Caput mortuum_ or _caput mundi_?"

Death or submission?  Not an easy choice for some.  More importantly, not a choice Dr. Lecter would proffer.  Clarice Starling considered carefully.

"Using a 'k', if I choose _kaputt mundi_, we have a broken world."  She watched to confirm that he understood.  "So, with license, I choose _kaputt mortuum_.  We have destroyed death."

It was with great satisfaction that Hannibal Lecter watched Clarice Starling pass her lessons through the years with flying colors, her beautiful, silken legs thrown across his shoulders at times, braced against the floor at others in what they happily referred to as _a tergo_.

She was a good student, and he, at times, considered that he should perhaps pace himself.  Then he would gaze upon the shattered remains of a teacup, and think to himself _kaputt mortuum_, and then he would remind himself that there were hundreds of languages, and more for him to learn yet.  Then he would go find her, wherever she was.

For Clarice's part, she reveled in being so utterly filled by Hannibal.  She diligently maintained the precarious balance of their relationship.  They had left his home near Paestum shortly after that morning, which had languished into bright noonday before they'd left that chair.  She never let herself forget why:  Though she would never know the details of his plan, she knew it had never been intended that she _live_ there.  

Days, weeks, months, then years went by, and there was always that delicious tension in the air between them, resulting in a manufactured hush, carrying the two in a bubble, a private sphere where two poles revolved in the endless game of light versus dark, with only the stars to guide them.

On a holiday in Tierra del Fuego, they stood at the point where the Atlantic and Pacific oceans meet, beautiful lights of Ushuaia glowing below them.  He pressed a kiss into her palm, and asked:

"So, my dear, have you found my world to be all that I'd described it to be?"

At times like these, so many years down the road they traveled together, she felt the temptation to trust and believe that he had changed his nature, that he could not do without her.  That she could tell him she loved him, and hear the same from his lips.

But the road they traveled was the Caminito, and the rules of the tango applied.

Even now, she knew, she must tread carefully.  To keep him would require some finagling, and it must be done with finesse, for she felt in her heart of hearts, that if he ever knew, it would be over.  It was a difficult line to walk, balancing in one hand the necessity that he must always wonder, and in the other hand the necessity that he must trust her, to a degree.  He must, every now and again, wonder:  _Did she hesitate just a moment too long?_  _Was that a look?  Was there an underlying meaning in that comment?  _

Only then, could she exist.

"Colors, sights, scents.  Yes, they're as you described."

"And silence?"

A pause.

A look.

"Silence."

~  ~  ~


	7. 7

"Silence."  

A comfortable pause.

"_Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?"_  This in a deadpan delivery by a Clarice long accomplished in Classical Latin.

A shared look.

Laughter.

~  ~  ~

(I couldn't resist.  The other ending was dramatic, but somehow…unsatisfying.  I believe they laugh—a lot.  The doctor does like his fun, and it *was* 'pre_scribed_' to Clarice…)

_a tergo_** --**from behind _quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi_** --**what is permitted to Jupiter is not permitted to a cow _Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?_** --**How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? 


End file.
